“You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you have to see and feel.”

Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: sociopath.

I’m gladly doing my own thing for the time being.

I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed. Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.

It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.

I learned that the world didn’t see the inside of you, that it didn’t care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.

Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

People say that eyes are windows to the soul.

Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.

A pathetic shadow, torn between her envy and thrill of being seen with Masomma, sharing in the attention as a weed would, lapping up water meant for the lily upstream.

Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.

They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind.

Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.

What good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.

Some stories don’t need telling.

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.

All good things in life are fragile and easily lost.

I have somewhere seen it observed that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower: she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it.

Together, we can make ourselves a nation that spends more on books than on bombs, more on hospitals than the terrible tools of war, more on decent houses than military aircraft.

I don’t normally have time to read, so when I go away I like to take a few books.

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap – people shouldn’t read that stuff.

The Devil writes down our sins – our Guardian Angel all our merits. Labor that the Guardian Angel’s book may be full, and the Devil’s empty.

I will say I am the sum of my books.

But everything of value about me is in my books.

Making a book is such a big enterprise.